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Monday, November 25, 2013

Over the past two years, we have worked with nearly a dozen families
that have had their lives financially and emotionally destroyed by the
adoption of children from the Luoyang orphanage. We have written
frequently about Luoyang and its deceptive "aging out program," but we feel it is time to re-iterate our deep concern for families seeking to adopt children from this orphanage:

Don't do it.

Several
adoption agencies have also not been acting in good faith as it relates
to Luoyang. Families we have worked with have written of their
experiences with Luoyang, and the devastating impact these adoptions
have had on their families. They have admonished their agency to cease
working with Luoyang, only to be told by their agency statements such as
that even if the children are not really orphaned, the program allows
children to come "to Christ" through adoption. Adoptive families have
been told that even if 90% of adoptions from Luoyang are fraudulent, to
think about the 10% of the children who really need homes. Thus,
families are encouraged to see "the big picture" in their adoption, and
not to speak publicly since that might discourage the "saving" of other
children.

We recognize that the possibility exists for
true orphans to be found in Luoyang, but families must recognize that it
is impossible to confidently ascertain if a child is a true orphan or
an area recruit for "education" prior to adoption. The orphanage has
worked hard to disguise these adoptions, have told the children to lie
to their adoptive families about the true nature of their histories, and
have emotionally manipulated these children into hiding the truth from
adoptive families. The CCAA, when confronted by angry adoptive families
about Luoyang adoptions, responded with a letter to each family on
March 20, 2013. After reviewing the official circumstances behind each
family’s adoption, the CCAA made the following statement:

After
the child was admitted into the CWI, to find an adoptive family for the
children, the orphanage prepared and submitted their files as orphans
for international adoption. Per the adoption laws and regulations of
China, the provincial Civil Affairs Office was in charge of reviewing
the child’s file and forwarded it to the China Center of Children’s
Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA.) Following regulations and protocols the
CCCWA matched the children with families. It’s not CCCWA’s
responsibility to check the truthfulness of a child’s file and CCCWA has
no means to decide if the information is accurate or not. Foreign
adoption agencies are not authorized to check the truthfulness of
information in a child’s file in China.

The
lack of transparency and the inability of adoptive families and agencies
to obtain accurate information about a child pre-adoption should serve
as major warning flags to all Chinese adoptions, but especially those
from Luoyang.

Adoption agencies will try to make you
feel guilty about not adopting from Luoyang. They will tell you that if
your don't complete the adoption, the child will be turned out onto the
street, with no home or family. In the case of Luoyang, this is almost
always a lie. They will indicate that it is normal for a young,
healthy male child to come into the orphanage at 8 or 9 years old, and
that older children can easily not remember who their birth parents are,
where they lived, etc.

The red flags are almost
always present in the finding statements of these children. The trick
is for adoptive families not to be conned by the agency, the CCAA, and
the orphanage into adopting these children. Doing so brings unhappiness
to the children, the Chinese birth families, but especially severe
financial, emotional, and sometimes physical jeopardy to the adoptive
families themselves.